[Ruthiebabe]

Hi

I need suggestions about a backup system. I want it to back up incrementally and recognise every change, and I want either to schedule it to run automatically at given times or for it to do it automatically as I work, ie whenever it spots a change.

I have (on bad advice) bought and used Norton Save and Restore. Yes it runs at scheduled times, but it is not as I thought, incremental and is fast filling my drive with backups, this can't be right and is unsustainable.

I shoot in RAW and use Capture NX2 so am saving large files, ie RAWS all the time, rarely JPEGS. General storage capacity will not be an issue, I am sorting that.

I have been recommended Memeo. Has anyone used this and if so is it suitable for my needs? Or what do you use?

I am not techy, it needs to be simple

TIA, Ruth

[Dabhand16]

I use Syncback - the free version. You might not have the Norton product configured correctly as I'm sure it ought to do incremental backups.

Personally, as much as I believe in backing up, I think to want to do it every time you make any change to an image is bordering on paranoia.

I make two DVD copies of the original files after downloading. I save everything to a dedicated drive which is backed up once a week. Every now and again I might also save the edited files to a DVD too.

There are several threads on this subject that might give you some idea of what people do.

http://www.pixalo.com/community/comp...ghlight=backup

http://www.pixalo.com/community/comp...ghlight=backup

http://www.pixalo.com/community/gene...ghlight=backup

http://www.pixalo.com/community/gene...hlight=back+up

[Jasondh]

I have a Apple Time Capsule which automatically backs up multiple computers and gives you the ability to look at what was on you laptop yesterday, last week etc. Really cool programme on a mac called Time Machine.

I also run a programme called 'file syncronization' on my mac which syncs my laptop to a network raid storage type device I have called a Drobo. This has 4-drives in it with about 3TB of space.

BTW Drobo's are PC compatible too!

[Jasondh]

For image backup in the field I bought a cool little gadget that connects into and iPod so that you can hook your camera to the iPod with a USB cable and back up the photos.

[Silver Dragon]

Data backups.
These should be handled differently from System backups.

BIG "Data ONLY" drives, and make use of the "Sync" function.

This little tool "Free" (we likes Free...) from Microsoft is a good one....
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

"Simples" ways of doing things are much appreciated here, I hate long complicated procedures, so I keep all my data completely separate from my main installation drive...
In a recent system crash where one of our kids managed to loose the network adapter completely, (and I still dont know how he did it) the whole of windows had to be re-installed...
Because NOTHING of my data, Media files, Notepad notes, system settings (Desktop theme, etc..) PDF's, downloads of anything, even updates, are stored on my main windows drive, all I needed to do was a quickie re-install of the windows to reclaim my system with the use of a slipstreamed copy I keep to hand.
Once re-installed, windows immediately found the data drives, with everything intact... and so it should be... the re-installation procedure only affects the main drive, data drives are not even looked at during that procedure.

This is not that hard to set up... you partition the main drive to one partition for C:\, for the windows, and as many as you feel logically workable for your data, and then bung in a few internal drives, or get a few external drives, to raise the amount of data storage you have.
Label each one...
Give it a name... "Photo", "Photo Backup", Photo Backup Backup" works here for instance....
Photo is the drive I put all new stuff on as it arrives, and the drive in use when I do editing.
After any significant changes, I then create a backup on the backup drive...
Once a month, I create a secondary backup on the "Photo Backup Backup" drive.

Paranoid?... who?... me?... yes, and proud of it... I have seen drives fail many times.

The Syc toy can be used to create a complete copy of your data drive, in that, it compares the two drives, and any changes, it will copy across from what you nominate as source to what you nominate as target...
That "backup" exists as a standalone file, in that, you do not need ANY software other than an operating system to get to them...
I prefer data backups done this way, because if you create a backup that can only be accessed by a certain program, if that program "falls over", how the hell do you get to your backups?...
In the way I suggest, the drives I have as backup storage can be taken to any computer and the operating system will be able to see them straight away...
This even works with Linux.
Linux can "See", and work on Windows drives.... although Windows doesnt even recognise a linux drive...

[Ruthiebabe]

excellent advice here as usual, rthanks all. Will take a look at the posts/tutorials suggested, too.

[The Barnsley Chop]

Originally Posted by Ruthiebabe

Hi

......I want either to schedule it to run automatically at given times............

The software supplied with Seagate external hard drives will do that.

[Dave Canon]

Originally Posted by Ruthiebabe

Hi

I have (on bad advice) bought and used Norton Save and Restore. Yes it runs at scheduled times, but it is not as I thought, incremental and is fast filling my drive with backups, this can't be right and is unsustainable.

TIA, Ruth

Last year, ater buying an external Seagate drive for backup, I used the Seagate backup software which incrementally backed up as soon as you made any changes. However, this slowed our two computer down significantly so after a few weeks we had to uninstall.

My latest PC (Dell) has Norton Save & Restore pre-installed and I have been using it for about 12 months or so. It does create incremental backups but you are right that they nevertheless result in the disk being rapidly filled. I suspect that this is because any minor change to a file (and many of the image files are very large) then a rewrite is required. I certainly found that about 4 or 5 increments required double the size of the original data. To overcome this I have adopted a different strategy. I am not suggesting that you do this but it works for me.

I have disabled incremetal and most scheduled back ups. I use two external drives and initiate a full back up to say drive A and a few weeks later to drive B and continue to alternate but deleting the old back up first. There are some risks to this so a few critical items (e-mails) are backed up automatically daily elsewhere. Also I do not erase my Original Raw files from the CF card (or my Epson P2000) until I have backed up to the external drive. As I am using a Raid 1 hard drive system for the main drive the remaining risk of losing data is small. For Ruth - Raid 1 means that there are two identical physical hard drives and one Mirrors the data on the other. If the data on the main drive is corrupted then it is repaired from the mirror copy.

I also keep additional copies of RAW and final Image archives as well but these are fixed as they are archives.

[Ruthiebabe]

Thanks for that, Dave. I've just done a back up using Save and Restore and then have deleted some of the previous backups to save space. Also, I've tried selecting an option to delte older backups as it goes so will see if that helps. It is all very confusing

[Dave Canon]

I seem to remember that although it normally does incremental backups, it also does a full backup at specific intervals. The management software then indicates which of the earlier backups is no longer needed and can be deleted.

Dave

[VinnyP]

For local backups I use Windows 7 own Backup and restore for system drives and Macrium reflect for files to an external drive. These both work increnetally and automatically. When I remember I mirror the backup drive to another which I keep in the office. I also use Carbonite for remote backup of files.

[sejanus]

It all depends on what you want to back up.

At home, we use Apple, Windows and Linux, so we need a cross platform solution. My wife, for all her very fine qualities, is not a techy, so it has to be simple and robust. My answer is a couple of super-cheap Linksys NSLU2s with a Terabyte of disk hung on each.

Each and every machine we use has a Data directory and all our data lives there. To back up, we simply copy everything in the Data directory to one of the NSLU2s and the other copies from that every night, so we have three copies of everything the following morning.

We also have 'Cloned' backups for the Apple and Linux machines, in case they go phut! There's very little point in trying to back up the Windoze boxes because we've yet to find anything that will consistently restore Mr Gates's little pet.

Actually, we can back up most of our Windows machines because they're Virtual Machines, living in the Data directories, so they get handled nightly.

Overkill? Well, yes, untill a ten grand job goes west because of a data glitch...

[silkstone]

Just to echo what sejanus says, with *nix based systems (Linux, Mac) you can just dump the entire system to a backup drive and, if necessary, restore by copying it back. That doesn't work for Windows which (a) won't let you copy system files that are in use, and (b) expects to find certain files in a specific location on the drive. Acronis True Image and Norton Ghost seem to be pretty good for imaging and cloning Windows. From OSX 10.5 onwards, Mac has Time Machine which backs everything up automatically.